بخش 04 - فصل 25

25

By the time Hodges and Holly leave the Crosstown for I-47 North, the snow is no longer just kidding around. Driving into it reminds Hodges of a science fiction movie he saw with Holly—the moment when the Starship Enterprise goes into hyperdrive, or whatever they call it. The speed limit signs are flashing SNOW ALERT and 40 MPH, but he pegs the speedometer at sixty and will hold it there as long as he can, which might be for thirty miles. Perhaps only twenty. A few cars in the travel lane honk at him to slow down, and passing the lumbering eighteen-­wheelers, each one dragging a rooster-tail fog of snow behind it, is an exercise in controlled fear.

It’s almost half an hour before Holly breaks the silence. “You brought the guns, didn’t you? That’s what’s in the drawstring bag.”

“Yeah.”

She unbuckles her seatbelt (which makes him nervous) and fishes the bag out of the backseat. “Are they loaded?”

“The Glock is. The .38 you’ll have to load it yourself. That one’s yours.”

“I don’t know how.”

Hodges offered to take her to the shooting range with him once, start the process of getting her qualified to carry concealed, and she refused vehemently. He never offered again, believing she would never need to carry a gun. Believing he would never put her in that position.

“You’ll figure it out. It’s not hard.”

She examines the Victory, keeping her hands well away from the trigger and the muzzle well away from her face. After a few seconds she succeeds in rolling the barrel.

“Okay, now the bullets.”

There are two boxes of Winchester .38s—130-grain, full metal jacket. She opens one, looks at the shells sticking up like mini-warheads, and grimaces. “Oough.”

“Can you do it?” He’s passing another truck, the Expedition enveloped in snowfog. There are still strips of bare pavement in the travel lane, but this passing lane is now snow-covered, and the truck on their right seems to go on forever. “If you can’t, that’s okay.”

“You don’t mean can I load it,” she says, sounding angry. “I see how to do that, a kid could do it.”

Sometimes they do, Hodges thinks.

“What you mean is can I shoot him.”

“It probably won’t come to that, but if it did, could you?”

“Yes,” Holly says, and loads the Victory’s six chambers. She pushes the cylinder back into place gingerly, lips turned down and eyes squinted into slits, as if afraid the gun will explode in her hand. “Now where’s the safety switch?”

“There isn’t any. Not on revolvers. The hammer’s down, and that’s all the safety that you need. Put it in your purse. The ammo, too.”

She does as he says, then places the bag between her feet.

“And stop biting your lips, you’re going to make them bleed.”

“I’ll try, but this is a very stressful situation, Bill.”

“I know.” They’re back in the travel lane again. The mile markers seem to float past with excruciating slowness, and the pain in his side is a hot jellyfish with long tentacles that now seem to reach everywhere, even up into his throat. Once, twenty years ago, he was shot in the leg by a thief cornered in a vacant lot. That pain had been like this, but eventually it had gone away. He doesn’t think this one ever will. The drugs may mute it for awhile, but probably not for long.

“What if we find this place and he’s not there, Bill? Have you thought about that? Have you?”

He has, and has no idea what the next step would be in that case. “Let’s not worry about it unless we have to.”

His phone rings. It’s in his coat pocket, and he hands it to Holly without looking away from the road ahead.

“Hello, this is Holly.” She listens, then mouths Miss Pretty Gray Eyes to Hodges. “Uh-huh . . . yes . . . okay, I understand . . . no, he can’t, his hands are full right now, but I’ll tell him.” She listens some more, then says, “I could tell you, Izzy, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

She closes his phone with a snap and slips it back into his pocket.

“Suicides?” Hodges asks.

“Three so far, counting the boy who shot himself in front of his father.”

“Zappits?”

“At two of the three locations. Responders at the third one haven’t had a chance to look. They were trying to save the kid, but it was too late. He hung himself. Izzy sounds half out of her mind. She wanted to know everything.”

“If anything happens to us, Jerome will tell Pete, and Pete will tell her. I think she’s almost ready to listen.”

“We have to stop him before he kills more.”

He’s probably killing more right now, Hodges thinks. “We will.”

The miles roll by. Hodges is forced to reduce his speed to fifty, and when he feels the Expedition do a loose little shimmy in the slipstream of a Walmart double box, he drops to forty-five. It’s past three o’clock and the light is starting to drain from this snowy day when Holly speaks again.

“Thank you.”

He turns his head briefly, looking a question at her.

“For not making me beg to come along.”

“I’m only doing what your therapist would want,” Hodges says. “Getting you a bunch of closure.”

“Is that a joke? I can never tell when you’re joking. You have an extremely dry sense of humor, Bill.”

“No joke. This is our business, Holly. Nobody else’s.”

A green sign looms out of the white murk.

“SR-79,” Holly says. “That’s our exit.”

“Thank God,” Hodges says. “I hate turnpike driving even when the sun’s out.”